The following criteria are designed to guide the states, federal
agencies, and the Secretary of the Interior in evaluating potential
entries for the National Register.

The
quality of significance in American history, architecture,
archaeology, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings,
structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design,
setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:

A. that
are associated with events that have made significant
contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or

B. that
are associated with the lives of persons significant in
our past; or

C. that
embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period,
or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master,
or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant
and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual
distinction; or

D. that
have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important
in prehistory or history.

Criteria
Considerations (Exceptions): Ordinarily cemeteries, birthplaces,
or graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious
institutions or used for religious purposes, structures that have
been moved from their original locations, reconstructed historic
buildings, properties primarily commemorative in nature, and properties
that have achieved significance within the past 50 years shall
not be considered eligible for the National Register. However,
such properties will qualify if they are integral parts of districts
that do meet the criteria or if they fall within the following
categories:

A. a
religious property deriving primary significance from architectural
or artistic distinction or historical importance; or

B. a
building or structure removed from its original location
but which is significant primarily for architectural value, or
which is the surviving structure most importantly associated with
a historic person or event; or

C. a
birthplace or grave of a historical figure of outstanding
importance if there is no other appropriate site or building directly
associated with his or her productive life; or

D. a
cemetery that derives its primary significance from graves
of persons of transcendent importance, from age, from distinctive
design features, or from association with historic events; or

E. a
reconstructed building when accurately executed in a suitable
environment and presented in a dignified manner as part of a
restoration
master plan, and when no other building or structure with the
same association has survived; or

F. a
property primarily commemorative in intent if design, age,
tradition, or symbolic value has invested it with its own historical
significance; or

G. a
property achieving significance within the past 50 years
if it is of exceptional importance.

APPLYING
THE CRITERIA

The two
principal issues to consider in determining eligibility
for the National Register are "significance" and "integrity."

A
property may have "significance" for association with
important events or patterns of history (criterion A); for association
with an important historical figure (criterion B); as an important
example of period architecture, landscape, or engineering (criterion
C); or for the information it is likely to yield (criterion D,
applied to archaeological sites and districts, and sometimes applied
to certain types of structures). A National Register nomination
must demonstrate how a property is significant in at least one
of these four areas. For properties nominated under criterion
A, frequently cited areas of significance are agriculture, community
planning and development, social history, commerce, industry,
politics and government, education, recreation and culture, and
others. For technical reasons, criterion B (significant person)
nominations are rare. Criterion C (architecture) is cited for
most, but not all, nominations of historic buildings. Archaeological
sites are always nominated under criterion D, but may also have
significance under one or more of the other three criteria.

Properties
are nominated at either a local, state, or national
level of significance depending on the geographical range of the
importance of a property and its associations. The level of
significance
must be justified in the nomination. The majority of properties
(about 70%) are listed at the local level of significance. The
level of significance has no effect on the protections or benefits
of listing.

Besides
meeting one or more of the above criteria, a property
must also have "integrity" of "location, design,
setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association."
This means that the property must retain enough of its historic
physical character (or in the case of archaeological sites, intact
archaeological features) to represent its historic period and
associations adequately.

All
properties change over time, and in some cases past alterations
can take on historical significance in their own right. The degree
to which more recent, incompatible, or non-historic alterations
are acceptable depends on the type of property, its rarity, and
its period and area of significance. Buildings with certain types
of alterations are usually turned down by the National Register
Advisory Committee. For example, 19th and early 20th century wood
frame buildings that have been brick veneered in the mid-20th
century are routinely turned down for loss of historic integrity.

Criteria
Exceptions

The
criteria exclude birthplaces and graves of historical figures,
cemeteries, religious properties, moved buildings, reconstructions,
commemorative properties, and properties less than 50 years old,
with certain exceptions. The following exceptions are sometimes
encountered:

Historic
churches that retain sufficient architectural integrity
can usually be successfully nominated under criterion C (architecture),
sometimes together with criterion A for social or religious history.

Cemeteries
may sometimes successfully be nominated under criterion
C when they retain important examples of historic stone carving,
funerary art, and/or landscaping, and they also may be eligible
under criterion A or criterion D. However, both the National Register
Advisory Committee and the National Register have turned down
nominations of graves when the historical importance of the deceased
is the sole basis for the nomination. The National Register was
created primarily to recognize and protect historic places and
environments that represent how people lived, worked, and built
in the historic past. Human burials are recognized and protected
under other laws and programs.

Moved
buildings may sometimes be successfully nominated under
criterion C for architecture when they remain in their historic
communities and the new setting adequately replicates the original
setting. The point to remember is that the program is called the
National Register of Historic Places, not Historic Buildings or
Historic Things, because significance is embodied in locations
and settings as well as in the structures themselves. Buildings
moved great distances, buildings moved into incompatible settings
(such as a farmhouse moved into an urban neighborhood or a downtown
residence moved to a suburb), and collections of buildings moved
from various locations to create a pseudo-historic "village"
are routinely turned down. In some cases, the relocation of a
historic building to a distant or incompatible setting may be
the last and only way to save it, and such an undertaking may
be worthwhile. However, sponsors of such a project must understand
that the property subsequently may not be eligible for the National
Register.

If a
property is less than 50 years old, it can be nominated only
if a strong argument can be made for exceptional significance.
For example, Dorton Arena on the State Fairgrounds was completed
in 1953. It was successfully nominated to the National Register
in 1973 as one of the most important examples of modernism in
post-WWII American architecture.